A downloadable game for Windows

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Trapped in the Great Abyss!
You are an old dreamer who, through unforeseen circumstances, has found himself trapped in the Great Abyss, the vast underworld beneath the Dreamlands.  Use the resources at your disposal, weapons, armor, supplies, and any alliances you have with the locals, to explore and learn the secrets of the underworld, in order to make your way back to the upper Dreamlands, or back to the Waking World. 

A Variety of Strategies
Although combat plays a big role in the game, it is not the only means of achieving one's goals.  Players may opt to use a combination of combat, stealth and/or dialogue to deal with the other inhabitants of the nether realms.   

Old School CRPG
Cyclopean follows the tradition of early CRPGs like Ultima, Questron, and Legacy of the Ancients (among others) in that it presents two differing views of the game world.  Outside of dungeons, you see your character from the top down in a 2D display of the map.  Whereas, in dungeons, the view changes to a 3D, first person perspective. 

Choose Your Dreamer Carefully
When you start the game you will be presented with a random dreamer, with basic abilities and equipment, and any alliances they have.  You can choose to play as that person, or "reroll" to see if you can find a better option.  Cyclopean gives you the freedom to choose from a wide variety of stodgy sounding English upper class gentlemen to play as.

Turn Based Gameplay
The gameplay and combat is all turn based, allowing you to make strategic decisions. Enemies are dangerous, but polite, and will wait their turn.

Alliances
Some characters will start the game with an alliance in place.  This can be very helpful in the early stages, especially for new players.  Alliances allow you to have some of the various denizens of the Great Abyss join your party, and help to fight other enemies.  New alliances can be formed during the game by finding and reading the right books.

Game Manual
There are many other game mechanics and other things that are described in the game manual.  The manual has been fully integrated with the game, so you can bring it up at any time, to learn about the various game mechanics available. 

Use the options menu to change game settings including the color...

Updated 17 days ago
StatusIn development
PlatformsWindows
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(2 total ratings)
AuthorSchmidt Workshops
GenreRole Playing
Tags1-bit, Atmospheric, Creepy, Dungeon Crawler, Lovecraftian Horror, retrogaming, Singleplayer, Solo RPG, Turn-Based Combat
LinksSteam

Purchase

Buy Now$9.99 USD or more

In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $9.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:

Cyclopean 0.9.914 59 MB

Download demo

Download
Cyclopean 0.9.914 DEMO 59 MB

Development log

Comments

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(1 edit) (+1)

Thanks for the new Demo! :) Well Done!

Love the art style! What game engine or programming language are you using to make this?

(+2)

I use 3D Gamestudio.  It's an older engine that uses Atari "Lite-c" scripting language.  

(+1)

The latest updates on Steam look super promising. I look forward to the latest version (0.9.912) also becoming available here on itch so we can try the new inventory features, meet the new encounters and enjoy all the other updates :)

(+1)

Ah, the latest version (Cyclopean_09913.zip) is available now!

(+1)

Excited to see that someone is using such an engine as the A8 to make games, I used to use the A7 like 20 year ago for 3D prototyping and it was straightforward and fun. What I want to say here is that it would be very helpful and handy if the direction of the player is displayed in the map and minimap (ex. an arrow for a player instead of the circle)
Cheers!

(+1)

Buy a compass from one of the vendors and the character's direction will be displayed on the minimap. After that, navigating dungeons is pretty quick :)

(+1)

Sounds legit! thanks a lot mate!

(+1)

Yes, I love 3D Gamestudio.  I regret nothing.

Seriously looking forward to this! Any word on a Switch/PS port?

Unfortunately no, unless it's a huge, runaway success and I can afford to pay someone to do that.  

The game looks amazing! Have you ever thought of translating it into more languages? I'd love to help with that. Let me know if you're interested and there's any way to reach you.

(+1)

Just bought the game here on itch :) But the game version is somewhat older than the version on Steam. When will the latest version be available here?

(+1)

Thanks for reaching out!  I do tend to forget to update the itch version as often ... but It eventually happens.  I just uploaded the latest version today.

https://schmidt-workshops.itch.io/cyclopean-the-great-abyss/devlog/886987/major-...

(+1)

Great, thanks for the quick response and for making this interesting game! Now I will continue my journey :D

this is great! I love the color scheme you used. 

Do you perhaps have a dev log? I am an aspiring game maker myself and would really love to see how you made this.

No real dev log, but I post some stuff on BlueSky once in a while... @mkschmidt30.bsky.social

I can't figure out how to pickup gold from monsters I kill in the overworld. I hit space to search the tile and it says gold in the top right. How do I pick it up?

I believe there is a bug in the trade/inventory menus right now.  When you search a corpse, if it has gold, it will show on the bottom in the action log.  You will automatically pick it up.

(+1)

Enjoyed the demo quite a lot, how long is the game supposed to stay in Early Access ?

I am planning on a relatively short Early Access period of about six months.  It will depend a lot on the kind of feedback I get and what players really want to see happen with the game (and how that aligns with my own vision of the game).  

(+1)

Looks very cool. And love the monster designs! 

Why thank you!

(+1)

Looks pretty sweet.

Thanks!

(+4)

Early Access is coming soon!  Release date scheduled this Friday, January 17th

(1 edit) (+1)

That's great to hear. I enjoyed Islands of the Caliph immensely and will buy Cyclopean the moment it hits the ground. Godspeed!

(+1)

Happy to hear it!  They are definitely different games in many ways, despite both being grid based dungeon crawlers.